- The VoiceLive Touch is made by TC-Helicon, a subsidiary of TC Electronic, who you're more likely to have heard of for their broad range of products covering areas such as guitar pedals, software plugins and studio effects. Helicon are the branch that are purely focused on products for vocalists, and their range comprises a number of upfront solutions, with a range of core processing technologies re-used in various configurations and with various interfaces throughout their product range. The VoiceLive Touch itself is part of a series that includes a more expensive studio rack version and a more light-hearted version (the Play) based around presets inspired by genres, artists and songs. (A Cher "Believe" preset is all but inevitable).
By "upfront," I mean that TC Helicon's devices are eminently usable, rather than eminently tweakable. The Touch is billed as an "instrument for your voice," which means that the design focus is firmly on facilitating creative flow, and, to state the obvious somewhat, on processing vocals. If you fancy yourself as the next Jamie Lidell, constructing loops and tracks out of effected vocals you're recording on the fly, then this is most definitely your product. It includes a looper, with which you can record a length of vocal, with effects, and then record further loops on top with different effects, doubling the loop length repeatedly if required.
The effects themselves are carefully chosen—like everything about this machine—and called up via generously sized buttons. Delay and reverb are included, as you'd want. But the other effects are more interesting. µMod is for flange, chorus, tube and rotor style effects, while FX combines autotune, a radio/megaphone style "transducer" effect and a low cut filter. Double, meanwhile, does what it says, overlaying multiple versions of the input. They're each based around a fairly limited but sufficient number of factory-configured presets, while the level, and occasionally another setting, is adjustable.
The "harmony" effect is probably the most involved of the lot. Put simply, it layers your voice with harmonies, turning you into an ensemble, of up to four voices at most. The harmonies themselves are fit to the key, which is either determined automatically from the notes you're singing, by setting it manually, or by an alternative source, whether that's chords you play yourself through a MIDI input, by guitar, by keyboard, or even by a backing track from an mp3 or CD player. This effect works rather impressively. It also allows you to pitch shift your voice by selecting only one harmony and cutting the dry signal. ("Automatic Barry White" preset—check). In general there's fairly substantial support for using a guitar or other backing instrument along with your vocals; helpful features include a tuner and a few reverb and chorus based effect presets.
The live setting is where the VoiceLive Touch is most at home. The unit itself is mountable on a mic stand with a well thought-out fixture that also gathers your cables. Despite being a touch screen, it feels more or less indestructible with a sturdy, rubberised build. The slider is a central feature in its navigation, and you can flick it, glide across it, or use the arrow buttons. The LED display updates and scrolls very rapidly, and although all this rapid movement can be dizzying at first, once you're used to it you can really fly. Effect presets are conscientiously arranged in several ways: as a long list, through a "wizard," or in concise preset banks which group effects of the same type—for example, ones that are particularly useful for making interesting loops, or harmony and doubling effects. It's very easy to find the type of thing you're looking for, and to do it quickly. A small number of subtle, studio natured finishing presets based around things like compression, shape EQ and de-essing are also available. Cannily, they're buried a bit so you don't have to worry about them while you're actually performing.
In terms of source material other than vocals, the µMod, Delay and Reverb seem to work fine with pretty much anything, but FX, Double, and Harmony are less successful. They can certainly produce distinctive effects, but equally, can sometimes either have minimal effect or produce harsh, scratchy distortion, particularly when using the pitch correction style effects with multitonal or amelodic material. It's apparent that they're optimised to work particularly with vocal material that has a clear melodic line. It doesn't provide a magic red button for fitting an a cappella to a track, though, as it'll shift vocal tones to the nearest note in the scale you're going for—not transpose the whole vocal line—and too much shifting can easily sound artificial. (On the other hand, these side effects can also result in something interesting.)
There are features that help you to integrate the machine into your studio-based setup, like USB functionality with three different modes; in Ableton, it showed up like a sound card, while the different modes allowed different signal and effects routing. It falls short of MIDI time sync, though, with tap tempo for the delay and human accuracy for the looper having to suffice. The latency on the Harmony effect in particular can be noticeable, especially on tight rhythmic tracks that demand snappy timing.
VoiceLive Touch is hardly a snip at the price, and in terms of all-around versatility for budget-conscious electronic music producers, it may not be at the top of the pile. But versatility is not the point here. VoiceLive Touch's major strength is in its workflow: it's remarkable how fluidly it allows you to be creative with your voice.
Ratings
Cost: 3.5/5
Build: 4.5
Sound: 4/5
Versatility: 3.5/5
Ease of use: 4/5